by Neely Tucker
“He’s not charged with it,” Keith said. “Yet.”
“They arrested him at the scene with the gun in his hand.”
“Right,” Keith said, “but they are drowning in the paperwork, the filing, on the Capitol. They’re wanting to get that straight.”
“And then, what, they fit—”
“Eddie,” R.J. cut in, softly. “The hour.”
He looked up at them. Sully could see the irritation flare in the upper reaches of his face, the eyes, the forehead. It wasn’t like Eddie didn’t spend a good chunk of his life threatening or intimidating people himself. Man lived in a Georgetown mansion. Sully pitied the dude repointing the brickwork who didn’t get it right the first time.
Eddie looked down at R.J., then at his Rolex. “Jesus. Alright. Do we know for certain where he, Waters, is at the moment?”
“Central detention facility,” Sully said, “the cells beneath police HQ. They’ve got isolation cells. Or he’s already at St. E’s. Or in transport.”
“And they’ll put him in Canan Hall, same as Hinckley? That’s c.q.? Even though he’s pretrial?”
Keith nodded. “It’s the building for the criminally insane, yeah, but, legally, it’s a hospital ward. The question is danger to himself or others. It’s like gen pop at D.C. Jail. You got guys waiting for trial, guys serving time. Like that.”
“Gen pop?”
“General population.”
“Okay,” Eddie nodded. “Okay. Not bad work here. Not shabby at all. Any update on his physical condition? The marshals?”
“Nah,” Sully said. “They shut down C-10 for the night after the dustup. Estes was plenty pissed, that sort of thing going down on his watch. Marshals are just saying bumps and bruises, a laceration to one guy’s forehead. It might be worse, but they’re not going to want to own it. Waters, for the record, had ‘minor’ injuries. They called it a ‘scuffle.’”
R.J. snorted. “Bet it wasn’t a scuffle once they got him back in the cell.”
Eddie, playing the principal to the classroom, didn’t smile. “This strategy from Miller, that’s going to be the legal tangle. She’s just predicting what the AUSA’s office is going to do, but of course they’re going to want to force-medicate him.”
“She’ll argue that his medical best interest, which would be to get treatment for a profound illness, is not in his legal best interest?” R.J. said, pushing his chair back, propping his feet on the desk.
“Yes,” Sully said.
“If it wasn’t a capital case, I don’t think there’d be much of an issue,” Keith said. “They’d be able to force-medicate. But here—”
“Keeping your client suffering but alive,” R.J. cut in, hands crossed behind his head now. “In an insane asylum strong room for the rest of his godforsaken life, listening to voices coming from the light fixtures and picking lice out of his beard. I love lawyers.”
“Beats being dead,” Sully shrugged.
“Does it? It’s the Vietnam argument of destroying the village to save it, if you’ll pardon a reference from my generation. Maybe the jury would come back guilty, but not for execution. It’s the District, after all. Or maybe not guilty by insanity like Hinckley, and he could wind up in exactly the same bed, on exactly the same floor, but medicated and in some semblance of existence.”
Eddie nodded, done with the BS session. “In any event, her client might be crazy but she’s not. It’s a cogent argument, compelling. Well argued, this could go to the Supremes. So. R.J., be so kind as to punch the button and send it to the desk. It’s at, what, fifty-seven inches, and we’re budgeted for fifty, but I think layout will accommodate us.”
R.J. sighed and pulled his feet down and put his hands back on the keyboard. Keith and Sully started to shuffle off. Eddie wasn’t done.
“Keith. Any chance we’ll have access to Waters over the next few days? Court appearance, anything at St. E’s?”
“None. No chance. Estes made noise about a hearing in federal court next week, but I don’t think so. We have no shot at access at St. E’s. Canan Hall is the most forsaken of the godforsaken. Waters will be on lockdown, talking to a couple of shrinks for the next thirty days.”
Eddie nodded. “Gossip query. I got asked this at poker the other night. Is Hinckley really dating that inmate up there, the woman who killed her kids?”
“I think you’d want to qualify ‘date,’” Keith said, “but they’ve been seen together at some of the dances, the social functions they have up there for patients, yeah.”
“A fly on the wall with those two,” R.J. said. “‘I shot the president, babe.’ ‘Ooooh. That makes me so hot. All I did was whack my children.’”
“Homicidal psychopaths need to get laid, too,” Sully shrugged.
Eddie, cutting it off, pointing at Keith: “I want you all over Miller’s idea, that she’s going to refuse force-medication. Work the Rolodex, track down your experts on the golf course or at the beach tomorrow. See if you can turn a daily on this for Sunday.”
Keith shrugged, nodded, yawned, headed for his desk.
“Sullivan,” Eddie said, “walk with me.”
He started back to his office, Sully falling in step beside him. The glass offices on the South Wall, the home of the brass, lay ahead, Eddie’s the only one still alight. They were moving away from the copy desk, moving alone, a private conversation in what was usually a very public place.
“Exceptional work the other day at the Capitol,” Eddie said, looking ahead, tapping the rolled-up printout on the palm of his hand, some jazzy little rhythm known only to him. “Truly special.”
“Thanks, boss.” Sully, hands in pockets, was ready to go home, have a late dinner with Alex and Josh, knock back some Basil’s and sleep for a month.
“You okay? From last night?”
“I suppose. But I don’t follow.”
“I’m asking if you’re okay. The shooting at the Capitol, the dead people, Waters trying to, for Christ’s sake, shoot you and Alex. Are you mentally, emotionally solid? That’s what I’m saying.”
“It sort of sticks in memory,” he said, slowing as Eddie did, keeping his face flat, voice steady, alert for the probes Eddie was sending. Not wanting to come off as defensive, or gung ho, and certainly not angry. Just normal. Why did that sound like an act?
“You know, it was kind of crazy there for a few minutes at La Loma. But I feel okay. The hands are steady.”
“You need time off?”
“What? No. Eddie, don’t even think about taking me off this.”
“HR tells me you’ve been going to the therapy sessions, no problems.”
“That’s right.”
“You back to the sauce?”
“Not a drop.”
“Good. Then pack your bags. You’re going to Oklahoma. We need to find out who this son of a bitch is. Boo Radley of the res, my ass.”
“I thought we had Elaine, Richard, whoever out there.”
“Had, yes. That’s the operative phrase. They’ve finished their takeout. It’s running tomorrow, but it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know. Now we’ve got a tropical storm, turning into a hurricane, in the Gulf. Richard’s headed back to Texas in the morning. Elaine, she’s in the middle of this piece on police brutality in Chicago. Besides, neither one of them, nor anybody else, has been able to get a goddamn thing on Waters. He’s a ghost, a phantom, the fog, the mist. Get out there and remind us why you’re the big swinging dick, the world-class parachute artist.”
SIXTEEN
“SO YOU’RE GOING?”
“If you can help me out with Josh, yeah.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” Alexis asked in the dark, them in bed, the hour late, the ceiling fan turning. Light from the street outside filtered through the shutters. She sounded on guard, her head on the pillow, turned toward h
im. He couldn’t see her features well enough to tell if she was being playful or offended.
“More or less staying at the house, babysitting, making sure he doesn’t set anything on fire.”
“What about while I’m at work?”
“That class at the Corcoran? He goes every day, all day. Kid’s a phenom. Also, introverted and sort of nonverbal. His parents, that’s my sister Lucinda and her husband Jerry, they’re extreme Christians, so he’s a little weird, you ask me. I let him hang out in the basement, watch all the horror movies he wants, drink some beer, ignore that he’s watching porn on pay-per-view. Lucinda calls, you can skip that.”
“My, but aren’t we the funny uncle.”
“Boy needs to be normal.”
“Jerking off in the basement is normal?”
“He’s fifteen.”
“What does ‘extreme Christian’ mean?”
“Jim and Tammy Faye.”
“What does he eat?”
“What do you mean, what does he eat? He’s not a dog. Pizza. Cheeseburgers. Boy food.”
“I don’t know anything about boys.”
“Think the grown version, only more gross.”
“How much are you paying me again?”
“Scoot closer and I’ll make a down payment.”
“Not a chance.”
“Well then. You can go with us to this cookout John and Elaine Parker are having tomorrow night, before I take off the next morning. He usually grills seafood. Man knows his charcoal.”
“He’s the homicide chief?”
“And his spouse, yes. Regular sorts. John, his momma is from Shreveport. Ellen, she’s from Myrtle Beach.”
“Who else is going to be there? I mean, I don’t want to go if—”
“Just us. I haven’t been over there all summer. This isn’t a D.C. function. This is some Southern ex-pats eating proper food and drinking beer.”
She yawned. “Okay. So I’ll take the cultural excursion. I’ll let you know your tab for Josh after I see how bad it is.”
“Kid’s a piece of cake.”
“So long as I don’t have to watch any porn.”
“Wait, we’ve never actually discussed this. You don’t like porn? You never struck me as a prude.”
“I’m not a prude,” she said, turning her head away from him, pulling up the covers. “But I already know what the inside of my hoo-ha looks like. I’m really not interested in looking at anybody else’s.”
* * *
John and Elaine Parker had gotten married right out of college—they met at a mixer at Howard a million years ago—produced progeny nine months and fifteen minutes later, and now their boys were grown and settled in Seattle and San Diego. The couple had their two-stories-basement-and-an-attic American four-square stucco back to themselves. It was in Cathedral Heights, a leafy neighborhood in Northwest D.C., on Macomb, the south side of the street. Its back was to the trees and the open expanse of the Washington International School. They also had a small beach house on the Eastern Shore, which Sully sometimes rented in the off-season, and others rented in the high season. The couple spent two or three weeks a year there, the mortgage being covered by the rentals.
Alexis had agreed to house- and Josh-sitting, Sully suspected, half as an act of kindness, to help him get resettled after the shooting, and half as an act of going out of her mind in the microscopic studio apartment where the paper was putting her up during her trial run as editor.
She wore short cutoff blue jeans, sandals, and a spaghetti-strap top, a thing in gold and blue. The shorts were not quite Daisy Dukes but not far from it, either. They were ironic, what with her hundred-dollar Italian sunglasses, that’s what they were. The go-to-hell self-confidence the woman possessed. It was what drew him to her the most.
Chez Parker faced the street, with a covered front porch, two gleaming white columns, rocking chairs, and petunias in hanging baskets. Homicide cops got paid only so much, but Elaine, who had gone into patent law, had worked her way up in a white-shoe firm downtown. She had made partner a decade ago. That the kids had gotten full-ride scholarships hadn’t hurt.
Best, John had told Sully, they had been able to buy the lot beside them from an elderly neighbor whose children had moved him into an assisted living facility over on Connecticut Avenue. After a decent interval, they had demolished the one-story rancher in order to give themselves a comfortable, L-shaped back and side yard.
Elaine, being Elaine, had the entire property surrounded by a white picket fence. She came out onto the front porch while they were still parking, waving, smiling.
“Come on up here and let me hug your neck,” she called out to Sully, as soon as they got out of the car, the Honda he kept in a neighbor’s garage. “I hardly recognize you, driving anything but that crazy motorcycle.”
“Hard to get three people on it,” he called back.
Sully had dinner with them a couple of times a year at their place, and once or twice at his, ever since he’d come back from Bosnia. John had just made detective when Sully went abroad, and was running the homicide squad when he got back.
Work talk was verboten by unspoken agreement at social gatherings. Sully introduced Alexis and Josh and then they all retreated to the shaded back deck, where John was holding court. The grill was already going, sea bass and scallops above low flames. He was working on a beer from a frosted pilsner glass. Elaine, being Elaine, already had the outdoor table set up beneath a green-and-white-striped patio umbrella. A breeze came up, the heat breaking.
John came off the grill, grabbed a football on the deck, and playfully underhanded it to Alexis, with nothing but a quick “Hey now” as warning. She, having picked up a Corona on her way through the kitchen, nimbly shifted the bottle to her left hand and let the ball come to her, tucking it in against her right side.
“Whoa,” John said. “Lady’s got hands.”
“And didn’t spill the beer!” Alexis said. She set the Corona on the table, flicked her tongue across the middle fingers of her right hand, and took the ball by the laces. She patted it twice, shifted her left foot forward, and cocked her arm, the ball up by her ear.
“Gimme a look,” she told Josh, flicking her chin up, toward the open expanse of the yard.
Josh looked over at Sully, who just nodded, smiling, knowing what was about to happen.
Josh, awkward as always, went down the steps to the yard, then half-trotted out in the grass, looking back at them all. Alexis zipped him a strike over the right shoulder, high and tight, a spiral that flew through his hands.
“Hey,” he said, frowning, shaking out his fingers.
She laughed. “I thought you said, back there in the car, that you knew your football.”
“I play,” he said, defensive, color coming up in his cheeks. “I wasn’t ready, that’s all.”
He came back, tossing it to her, wobbly. She caught it, then repeated the same motion, flicking the tongue, shifting her feet, but now bounced on her toes, knees bent, like she’d just come from under center. She snapped her right arm up, ball beside her ear, and slapped it twice with her left hand.
“Gimme a deep post.”
Josh lit out, no kidding this time. She stepped into her throw, putting some air under it, a floating spiral that came down, down, down, right into his outstretched hands, five yards before the picket fence. Josh had to put a hand out for it, halting his momentum. He looked back, smiling, like he’d just snagged it in the back corner of the end zone.
“Nice grab, champ,” she said, saluting him with a short, piercing whistle. “Now lemme finish my beer.”
John stood with his hands on his hips, forgetting the scallops, eyebrows raised, looking over at Sully, who shrugged. Elaine made a show of dropping her chin, opening her eyes wide, and then closing them both. She used a paper towel to dab a film of perspiration f
rom her forehead—the humidity, the heat from the fire—and said, turning to Alexis, “Where did—”
“I was the only boy,” Alexis said, sitting down on the bench, crossing her legs, the show over, reaching for her beer, “that my father ever had.”
* * *
By midnight, they were back at Sully’s, the back-porch conversation with the Parkers having lingered over everything and anything but the shooting. Gladiator, which Alexis liked but said wasn’t half the movie Memento was; the Saints, Sully’s team; the Cowboys, John’s (“They were the first to integrate. The Redskins, last. Old heads don’t forget.”); Tiger; the brushfires out west; the lingering bullshit over Bush v. Gore; Jesse Ventura as Minnesota governor (which drove Elaine to near distraction); land seizures in Zimbabwe.
Once home, Josh wanted to turn in without a shower. Sully was going to let him slide but Alexis, already in charge, said, “Absolutely not. Boys stink.”
She frog-marched him to the basement door and gave a light push. “Wet. I want to see that hair wet. I want the smell of soap and shampoo. Don’t try running the water for two minutes while you stand there with the door closed.”
Sully went upstairs to pack, grabbing two pair of jeans, a pair of slacks, a sport coat, two dress shirts, two pullovers, some underwear and socks, and a pair of gym shorts to sleep in. Nobody on the road ever saw you more than twice, so nobody knew if you wore the same shirt three times in one week, and if they did, fuck ’em.
He was getting toiletries from the bathroom—razor, shaving cream, and toothbrush—and from that spot, there at the top of the stairs, he could hear that Josh had come back up from the basement to the kitchen. Alex was unpacking the dishwasher. Sully stopped, listening.
“So, here,” he heard Josh say.
Footsteps and then a long, exaggerated sniff. “Aaaahhhhh,” Alexis said. “Shampoo and clean hair. Girls dig that kind of thing.”
“I know.”